A whole site better

Chill-out zones with foosball tables, nap rooms and fitness centres are now common sights in the office world, but they’re virtually unheard of in the containers that serve as offices on many building sites. The main attraction of such work – and sometimes the only one – is the pay. “When it comes to job interviews in this sector, the subject of well-being is almost never broached. Candidates don’t ask about it and employers have little to boast about it either. Thus well-being as a concept in this sector is of little importance during recruitment and doesn’t play a significant role in employee retention,” admits Wioleta Tyszko, a consultant for real estate and construction at recruitment firm Hays in Poland.

Safer is sounder

As she goes on to explain, the most important aspect of well-being on a building site is how safe it is. This is the main way that construction companies, as well as developers, look after their workers and are prepared to take on additional costs for their welfare. Last year, Echo Investment was recognised at the Buduj Bezpiecznie [Build Safely] awards organised by Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy [the National Work Inspectorate] for the number of its developments that featured additional precautions to ensure the safety of building site workers, including measures that are not required under Polish law, such as those for preventing tower crane collisions. “This requires an additional outlay of PLN 100,000–200,000 per building site,” reveals Dariusz Nowak, the director of environmental protection and health and safety at Echo. But for Echo it is worth the cost. “The risk analysis is crucial for this. We take working at heights and the lifting of materials particularly seriously,” he insists.

Investors are also playing an increasing role when it comes to such issues and have been making their expectations clear to their general contractors when it comes to additional safety measures. “General contractors need to know before the contract is signed that, for instance, we expect them to use anti-collision systems with their cranes. After all, they have to cost these additional precautions so that they can include it in the contract,” explains Dariusz Nowak.

Construction firms themselves have also been making enhancements to their own safety standards. In 2010, a number of leading constructors signed the Construction Safety Agreement, which sets out measures to reduce the number of building site accidents. Fourteen of the largest construction companies in Poland have so far signed up to this. A number of developers are also interested in a similar initiative. “Early this year, we will be signing a preliminary agreement with other developers who want to ensure high safety standards in their projects,” reveals Dariusz Novak. In his opinion, encouraging greater safety on building sites in this way is important because there is currently a vast and diverse range of standards in this field to choose from, and as a result this often results in safety rules simply being ignored. “From what I’ve seen, most single-family residential constructions are cowboy jobs without the proper health and safety procedures,” he claims.

Better in the back office

According to Jacek Korwin-Małaszyński, a member of the management board of APP-Projekt,large general contractors are now playing a significant role in promoting standards both for health and safety and also for the working environment. “These are the larger companies for whom prestige matters – and so what happens on the building site and in particular in the back offices is important to them. More often we are now seeing container offices with conference rooms and other amenities for the workers. Some have air conditioning and comfortable areas where you can eat breakfast or meet people and chat. Even though such containers are still hardly a feature of every building site, the situation is changing,” he points out.

Such back offices above all have to be functional. “Building sites are increasingly offering non-standard amenities, such as vending machines. On one there was even a ping-pong table. Above all, you don’t want them to be back offices just thrown together in any old huts or barracks. They’ve got to be coherently planned out,” argues Dariusz Nowak.

According to him, the standard of the back offices is very important for building up relationships with workers. “If we want to demand something from them – such as that they follow the health and safety procedures, which is something that as a developer we take very seriously – we have to make an effort to ensure that our employees have adequate working conditions on the building site. Without this fundamental condition, it’s hard to expect workers to react positively to our expectations. People want to work in decent conditions and so providing them is a matter of respect,” he insists.

Echo Investment also has special places where workers can give their feedback and communicate their needs. “We call this: ‘you say it – we do it’. The employees can write down what they don’t like about the building site. For example, it’s clear how important it is to them to have hot water or soap and how unhappy it makes them when they don’t,” explains Dariusz Nowak.

However, many investors only focus on the managerial and engineering staff. “Echo Investment doesn’t employ its own manual workers, but even so we have devised an entire award system for them. On each of the building sites where the employees of our subcontractors’ work, we regularly award prizes, such as electric drills or a set of tools,” reveals Dariusz Nowak. This is to show them that all their hard work and efforts to maintain safety standards are appreciated. Such small gestures, when compared to costs of the overall investment, can be very well received. “Some have even been moved to tears – after many years of work their efforts have at last been recognised,” says Dariusz Nowak.

Engineering better solutions

Despite the changing attitudes of some firms towards their employees, their focus on the well-being of construction workers often only extends to engineers and managers. Meals are often laid on for them on the building site and some are even provided with a weekly visit by masseurs. “This is mainly because the engineering staff are in
a better position to negotiate working conditions,” admits Jacek Korwin-Małaszyński of APP-Projekt. Wioleta Tyszko of Hays has also seen the expectations change of this class of employee. “For instance, in the past engineers didn’t care so much about where the office blocks were. They were prepared to leave home and sometimes travel all over Poland. These days, being close to where they work, not spending half the day travelling and not being separated from their families are top priorities when they change their jobs. This,
however, has forced employers to try to meet these expectations,” she explains. For the last year, APP-Projekt, which has many engineers on its payroll, has employed a CSR manager who is also responsible for maintaining a good atmosphere among the staff. “We put a lot of effort into providing community-building activities for our employees: we organise a range of sports events and hold teambuilding meetings and ‘Fruit Mondays’. Such activities are, after all, becoming standard practice in this sector,” emphasises Jacek Korwin-Małaszyński. On top of all this, engineers can talk directly to their superiors about the challenges they face in their work. “Employees appreciate it when a director or board member comes to visit the site. They like to feel that they are in
partnership rather than being treated as faceless labourers. The fact that they can show someone their work and talk about it openly means a lot to them. We want APP-Projekt to be a company that it is worthwhile working for and we want it to be seen that way too,” claims Jacek Korwin-Małaszyński. According to him, it’s important that employees are not left to cope with problems on their own, since if this was the case they would never derive any satisfaction from working on
a project and this can only lead to frustration with their work. “I’ve seen how big firms operate and
I want it to be similar for us, so that our
employees don’t just move from one project to another. It’s important for them to have
a permanent relationship with the company and for a community spirit to be developed within in it,” he adds.

Turning to the tech

In spite of all this, well-being is still a concept that is finding it hard to get off the ground on building sites – as is confirmed by Radosław Kruczek of Wellbeing Polska, a company that specialises in providing consultancy for well-being programmes. Over the last 23 years it has advised over 100 companies, but very few of these have so far been from the construction sector. “Construction firms still find it difficult to see how a well-being oriented approach could work for them. They don’t know how they can effectively and without exorbitant costs invest in preventative health measures for their workers,” admits Radosław Kruczek. One challenges for the sector is how to encourage
a healthy diet among the staff. “Employees will often go to local convenience stores to buy
themselves a hot dog and while they’re at it they’ll get a small bottle of vodka. There’s a tendency for workers to consume a lot of empty calories that are low in essential micronutrients – and for manual
labour this can often lead to injuries and
infections,” explains Radosław Kruczek. As in every other sector, a good way of avoiding this approach to eating is to come into work with
a healthy packed lunch prepared at home, but to do this employees need to have developed the
appropriate personal habits. And on top of the range of issues specific to building sites, there are also the usual modern civilisation problems, such as stress, burn-out and disrupted sleep patterns.

The solution to all this, according to Wellbeing Polska, is for construction companies to install what they call ‘health sensors’. These are devices the size of a mobile phone and have NFC sensors as well as QR code stickers. They can be put up around the building site – such as in the offices, the toilets, the social rooms or the corridors. When a smartphone is used to read the QR code, via an app it can receive health and relaxation tips. The app also be used for asking questions to psychologists, dieticians and even lawyers and financial advisors. “These are fully paid consultants who can help employees reduce their stress levels. Since these can have many different causes, the advice ranges from tips on how to raise their children to advice on specific financial or legal management issues,” says Radosław Kruczek.

Such apps can simply be used to remind
employees that they can actually do something about their health. “The main thing is to
constantly stimulating workers to take an interest in their own health. This often requires a change in their mentality, so such activities can only often have a drip-drip effect,” he admits. But as a result of having all these QR stickers at work, employees can take them home and, for example, stick them on the fridge so that they and their families can use them.

“Often a change in habits occurs within a family environment – through, for instance, influencing what’s cooked and eaten at home,” explains Radosław Kruczek.

However, as he goes on to add, for companies that employ fewer than a hundred people, investing in preventative health measures could seem
a little too costly. So the question is, would there be a return on this investment for those firms that actually do have the resources to do this? Radosław Kruczek has no doubt that it would. “I think that such companies will see goals being achieved quicker and lower staff rotation in around two years, but the effect on the perception of the company’s image by workers will become evident within the first year,” he says, while emphasising that there can be no short cuts when it comes to well-being: “The main thing is to introduce a company culture that encourages employees to look after their health – and changing their attitudes to this is a long-term process. It is, however, important to start somewhere and then proceed step-by-step,” he adds.

The assertiveness of youth

It seems that the well-being concept is only just taking its first few tentative steps onto building sites. “The older generation, which had no option but to accept lower standards, is gradually starting to leave the labour market. However, the attitudes of younger generations are markedly different,” points out Dariusz Nowak. Wioleta Tyszka is of a similar opinion: “These trends are clearly evident in other sectors, so sooner or later they will arrive in the construction sector. This is because those companies that promote their buildings as comfortable and healthy places to work in cannot be seen to be neglecting the safety issues on their building sites or allowing working conditions to deteriorate.”